Ghorman
by Gia Alexander
Summary: Tarkin and the Ghorman Massacre.


**Summary**

It would be called The Ghorman Massacre, and it would incite a Rebellion that would bring down an Empire . . . 

"The landing pad is not clear!" 

Tarkin pushed his work aside and bolted to the controls. He paled at what the instruments told him.

"It's too late!" he shouted. "We can't divert! Strap yourself in--quickly!" He scrambled to activate the cruiser's crash shields . . . 

**GHORMAN**

Though he would rather crush the Ghorman System under his heel, what Palpatine considered to be his better judgment interceded, based on the political rumblings and quarrelling still rampant in the Senate since his inception of the Galactic Empire. Better, he thought, that he should send a single representative to downplay, for the moment, his intentions of a threat. 

Wilhuff Tarkin was such a gifted and charismatic speaker. If anyone could assuage the unrest of the defiant world with a few glib strokes of a silk tongue, Tarkin could do it. Better yet that he should do it with his wife at his side, a leading member of the Corporate Sector who understood economics and commanded respect in her own right. Their unified presence, he noted, would cast a safe and family-oriented light on the New Order. 

A quick and quiet diplomatic excursion to speak and collect the Ghormani taxes. That's what Palpatine had told them. A vacation of sorts, to rebuild their confidence after their ordeal at Geonosis, and to reaffirm his confidence in them. They would take the _Xephyr_, the light but nimble cruiser that Tarkin had inherited from his great-uncle Ranulph. Only he and a few other family members knew what the small ship could really do. 

After appearances at a dozen diplomatic events culminating with the recent Gala Aldera on Alderaan, the Tarkins found themselves quite tired, lacking their usual focus, and badly in need of a break. Furthermore, they wanted to be alone, so the Emperor arranged for an appropriate security detail to meet them on Ghorman instead of traveling with them. Contrary to public opinion, Wilhuff and Thanyphania Tarkin actually loved each other very deeply, perhaps too much so. More than once, knowledge of their bond had been used against them by those in power, rather, those more so in power than they. 

After they reached cruising speed in hyperspace, Lady Tarkin began to move around the cabin, directing the one servant droid they'd brought with them to unpack their things and put them away in the sleeping alcove. They'd be three days in hyperspace to Ghorman, two there, and another three back to Coruscant. Both looked forward to six days of rest, though each defined that term a bit differently. No sooner had they settled in than Tarkin sat himself down at the general computer terminal with a briefbag full of papers and datacards. His wife merely smiled bemusedly at him. His brain never shut down, she knew, as she ambled up behind him to look over his shoulder.

"_Visions of the New Order_," she read from the screen. "That sounds . . . idyllic."

"No, Typhani, quite the contrary," he replied lightly as he scrolled through the file. "It's actually very formulaic."

"Cos is going to restructure the entire government, isn't he?" she asked, taking a seat nearby.

"Yes, he is, and this is the blueprint. We're going to rise very rapidly now, Typhani," he assured her in his customary crisp, clipped tone, an ingrained trait of his that relented only in bed. Typhani sank back in her chair, drifting in thought, somewhat disappointed. She had looked forward to them spending a great deal of the travel time together, in a place that did not call for clipped, commanding speech, but rather the lazy moans of erotic ecstasy. After all, they'd been married a decade now, and had been trying to start a family. But now she found her husband writing another book. The juxtapositions seemed odd to her at times, a military commander at one moment, her husband and lover the next, a writer the next, a ship architect at another instant, then a diplomat, followed by a few hours of being a biologist. His intellect was so vast, it seemed to her that there was nothing he couldn't do, no subject he couldn't master, if he set that mind of his to it. She found it very awe-inspiring, sometimes overwhelming, to be in the presence of such a powerful mind. 

Not that her own intelligence paled in any way next to his. In fact, their mutual intellect brought them together. She, too, had taken on many roles since their marriage at the hands of then-Chancellor Palpatine. In addition to running her company, a vast and profitable Phelarian megonite munitions facility that had been her birthright, she had carried out a number of "covert operations" at the behest of Palpatine over the years, and often assisted her husband in his endeavors. She drank in his knowledge and his essence with an uncanny ability to absorb. Adrian loved to teach, she had realized, in that it gave him a sense of power over those who would learn from him. One of her secret fantasies was that one day they would leave all of the danger, intrigue, and ambition inherent in the new Empire behind and become what she called their "shadow selves," roles in which Adrian would become a high school science teacher, she would have a booth featuring her handmade jewelry at the local street market, and no one would know who they really were. Perhaps in another incarnation, she thought.

Typhani had found that she could get closer to Adrian when he would be in one of his distant moods, absorbed in some project, if she could coax him to teach her something. Of late, he had been teaching her to fly light spacecraft, like the _Xephyr_. She allowed him to work for awhile longer. Then, when the keystrokes slowed, she moved to the cockpit area and began to peruse the instrument panels. Earnestly interested in improving her piloting skills, she studied the controls, comparing their positions and settings to the readouts on the monitors, some of which she already understood well, particularly the navicomputer. He hadn't allowed her to take off yet, but with Adrian over her shoulder, she had brought them into Port Tarkin once and Eriadu City twice. 

It wasn't long before he hovered over her again, having emptied the temp file in his brain into the computer and grown stiff from sitting in the uncomfortable chair. "These are the controls for the comms station," he explained. "We have hyperspace text/data transmit and receive, and voice, text, and data on the subspace transponder."

She knew what that was. "But this doesn't look a thing like the one in my office," she pointed out.

He chuckled softly at her. "No, Typhani, of course not. The units that work from space have a very different configuration, but the operations concept is similar. Here," he continued as he brought the transponder online. As she had hoped and suspected, their activities in the cockpit soon moved to a more comfortable part of the ship.

And so they spent the next three days, pursuing mutual and private interests, learning the fly the _Xephyr_, catching up on reading, working on the new book, and Typhani had brought some of her beadwork along.

When they arrived at the jump point just outside of the Ghorman System, Adrian assumed the controls to take them out of hyperspace. It seemed so easy for him, Typhani observed, as she watched him carefully. Everything seemed easy for him.

"We'll be another hour or so at sublight speed. I'd like to get this chapter finished," he announced as he stepped back into the main part of the cabin and resumed his place at the computer terminal. 

"We've dropped into orbit," Typhani noted as she glanced at one of the overhead monitors. She dropped her beadweaving into her bag and stood up. 

He looked up from the computer. "Go on. Take us in," he urged her.

"Alone? Do you think I'm ready? I don't have my certification yet . . . "

He smiled softly at her. "Of course, Typhani. Otherwise, I wouldn't have told you to do it. I have every confidence in you!" Then he turned back to the computer and continued typing busily.

She smiled back at him, and started to turn toward the cockpit, but then thought of something else. "Shall I open a comm channel and hail them to verify the coordinates?"

"Oh, no, don't bother. They know we're coming. Just use the ones they transmitted to us on Coruscant."

Typhani nodded in understanding, then proceeded to the cockpit of their cruiser, where she initiated the landing sequence just as her husband had taught her, carefully entering into the navicomputer the landing pad coordinates they had received previously. But as they entered Ghorman's atmosphere, an alarm began to beep, an alarm with which she was not familiar. Typhani quickly double-checked the coordinates she had entered, but determined them to be correct. After perusing the control panel for a moment, she realized that someone was trying to open comms with them. As a novice, it took her another few moments to tune a clear signal on the subspace transponder. She wasn't overly concerned, expecting merely an automated welcome message. At first, all that came through was static, but then a strained male voice crackled urgently from the comm station speaker.

" . . . people on the platform! Repeat, you are not clear for landing!"

She glanced at the navicomputer screen. The warning flashed in bright red letters, "LANDING COORDINATES INVALID--PLANETFALL DESTINATION POINT OCCLUDED--DIVERT AT ONCE--PLANETFALL DESTINATION POINT OCCLUDED!"

"Adrian!" Typhani called frantically. "Something's wrong! It's the landing sequence! The landing pad is not clear!" 

Tarkin pushed his work aside and bolted to the controls. He paled at what the instruments told him. "It's too late!" he shouted. "We can't divert! Strap yourself in--quickly!" He scrambled to activate the cruiser's crash shields, then reached for a safety harness . . .

He braced himself for a hard impact with what he suspected would be another vessel, but at first it seemed that the ship had landed normally. Then it began to slide forward, as if the landing gear had not been able to make good contact with the pad. He braced himself again, knowing they were going to go over the side, but the ship ground to a halt just short of the edge of the landing pad.

Then he heard the screaming. Both human and non-human screaming. Hundreds of voices screaming . . . 

One scream rose above all the rest. Finally allowing himself to draw a breath, he turned to his wife, who had managed to secure herself to one of the four crew seats in the cockpit. "It's all right, Typhani," he assured her. "We've stopped." Trembling uncontrollably, she bolted for the hatch when he released her safety harness. He caught her before it was too late. "No, don't open that! There may be nothing below us!"

"But we have to get out!" she cried. "It's going to explode!"

He pulled her close. "No, we didn't hit anything, nothing solid, that is. The fuel cells are all right. It's not going to explode." Two thoughts came first to his mind, that Typhani had entered the wrong coordinates, or that the pad had not been properly prepared for their landing. Typhani calmed down as he held her, but she was facing one of the side viewports. 

"Adrian . . . " she gasped.

"What is it?" With Typhani silenced, he could hear the other screaming again. Slowly, he turned his head to look out the viewport. The landing pad, he realized, now lay strewn with charred and torn human and non-human remains, some with their protest posters still clenched in a death-grip. They had landed on a platform packed with protestors.

Then came the angry pounding on the external hatch. Out of the corner of his eye, Adrian spotted four men rushing toward them with blaster rifles that could potentially penetrate the ship's viewports.

Typhani looked up at her husband, deep terror in her dark gray eyes.

"Come on! We have to get out of here!" 

Hundreds who were attempting rescues scrambled away as the cruiser's engines whirred to activity again. Adrian only hoped that they had enough solid pad under them for the thrusters to work. He initiated liftoff before the Ghormani spaceport patrol could pin him to the landing pad. Five patrol craft came in pursuit anyway, and attempted again to open comms. Adrian shut the comm station down with a forceful blow from his right fist, then quickly activated his small craft's deflector shields in case the Ghormani patrol ships decided to fire. 

As one patrol ship came around, Tarkin revealed that his craft was indeed armed, as he deployed two laser torpedo cannons from their concealment bays.

Typhani screamed again. "They're going to fire at us!"

"It's all right--the shields are up," he told her as he trained his cannons on the small patrol ship, its pilot merely trying to establish comms. Although he could see full well that the patrol ship's laser cannons were not in attack position, he nonetheless squeezed the firing mechanism. The smaller ship exploded in an array of fire and shards. Tarkin felt exuberant exhilaration as the shockwave washed over his cruiser. "All right, where are the rest of you?" he asked rhetorically, checking his monitors for the positions of the other four ships. 

He felt the jolt from behind as the shields took the impact from the patrol ship that had returned fire. Typhani reeled from the gravitational forces that nearly rendered her unconscious as her husband brought their ship around hard and fast, then suddenly reversed direction, throwing off the trajectories of the attacking patrol ships.

"Ah ha!" he exclaimed as they spun around behind one of the other patrols. A quick squeeze of Adrian's right hand dispatched the small ship and its pilot into oblivion. Typhani watched her husband in awe, having never before seen him in a true combat situation.

"Would another of you like to try it?" he taunted the three remaining vessels. They promptly beat a hasty retreat. "That's what I thought," he chuckled smugly. He glanced quickly over his shoulder. "Stay put, Typhani! I'm about to make the jump to light speed!"

Once again in the relative safety of hyperspace, they both sat back, drawing deep breaths of relief. Adrian then looked tensely contemplative for a moment, trying to sort out in his mind what had just happened. He first turned to the navicomputer, to verify the coordinates Typhani had entered against those transmitted to him on Coruscant. They matched. Next he checked the comm station's text log. The situation was not good. He would be held responsible for the deaths of hundreds of beings, he was sure, regardless of who was at the controls when it happened. Typhani simply shouldn't have been flying, and he had allowed her to do it. If only she'd reacted more quickly, or called out to him as soon as the alarm went off. She should have at least had that much sense, he fumed. He glanced over at her. She stared back at him wide-eyed, still shaky, her mind also in turmoil. She too realized the awful responsibility that would be pinned on them. Better they should own up and let the Emperor hear it from them instead of over the holonet.

"Hadn't we better let Cos know what just happened?" she suggested raspily, her throat and mouth dry from the intensity of the last half hour. 

He turned incredulous. How could she possibly even think of the Emperor at that moment, let alone mention him? "Don't be ridiculous!" he snapped icily. "Your dawdling back there has very likely just put an end to my career, Typhani, and you seek only to hasten it by contacting Coruscant?"

She winced visibly, obviously hurt. "But Adrian, I didn't--I didn't know--"

Angry in the moment, isolated, and cornered by his present situation, circumstances that usually produced an apoplectic rage in him, he turned on the only target available to him. He rose from his cockpit chair and began pacing in front of her. "You didn't know! You didn't act! You didn't _think_, Typhani!" He pounded his right fist into his left palm. "Now look what you've gotten us into! You have _ruined_ us--that's what you've done! We can't possibly go back to Coruscant now! And I presently have no idea of where we can go!"

"I did exactly what you taught me, Adrian!"

"You should have been watching the monitors instead of playing with the dials on the comm station! Then you'd have seen the occlusion warning in time! But you were too busy twittering with technology you obviously have no business touching and cannot comprehend! I see my efforts have been wasted on you!" 

Lady Tarkin shot up out of her seat and lunged at her unsuspecting husband, slamming her body hard into his with her full Phelarian force, equal to his in size and strength, pinning him to the cabin wall. She grabbed his tunic collar in a fistful of rage, and rammed that fistful of fabric up under his chin. His face darkening with raw anger, he brought one hand up to defend himself, but she released his collar and caught his hand instead, driving it and the fist she'd clenched around it into his gut. He instinctively brought his other hand around, but she caught it by the wrist with her free hand, twisted it over his head, and held it to the wall. Her dark eyes flashed with anger as she drove a knee up into his groin. "You arrogant, insolent, self-consumed son-of-a-Sith!" she seethed through clenched teeth. "Don't you even _dream_ of laying all of the blame for this at my feet! I asked you if I should verify the coordinates before initiating the landing sequence, and you said don't bother! And I reminded you pointedly that I don't yet have my flight certification! Perhaps you've conveniently forgotten about all I've done for you over the past ten years--helped to put you where you are now! Do you think you'd have done as well with some dithering little idiot like Genevieve Ozzel or Theala Vandron? Do you?! Do you think you'd have survived that illness you had just before you and Raith went traipsing off to Zonama Sekot? No! You'd have lain there in that bed in that dismal little apartment and died, Adrian! Or do you think you would have gotten out of the Maw alive if I hadn't nosed up to Cos to find out where the hell you were? Not to mention all the dirty work I've done for him over and over again to secure your precious promotions! You said it yourself once, we're _both_ trapped in Cos' web! _You_ are the one who got us into this situation in the first place by aligning yourself with him! Gideon warned you otherwise, but you wouldn't hear it! You said he was just a stupid kid! _You_ are the one with all the grand philosophical ideas--with all these visions, as you call them, for Cos' New Order! So _you_ figure out a way to get us out of this mess! And if this is the way you are going to treat me, then it may well be far more than your career that is over!"

At last, she released him. He slumped forward, half bent over, as he clutched himself until the pain of the pressure she'd exerted passed, When he could finally come up for air, he rubbed his left wrist as he glared at her. She'd nearly cut off his circulation. For one fleeting, ugly, and disgusting instant, the thought of his blaster aimed squarely at her head passed through his mind. For the first time in over ten years of marriage, they turned coldly and bitterly away from each other, and for several excruciating hours did not speak. 

As his rage slowly subsided and he accepted their mutual culpability, Adrian turned the scenario over and over in his mind, trying to come up with a remotely reasonable explanation that the Emperor would accept. He saw no way out. He had been sent on a diplomatic mission, sent to maintain order and diplomacy, to avoid a conflict until the Senate reached an equilibrium that Palpatine found satisfactory. This, he realized with a slight inward shudder, would likely cause Senatorial dissent to conflagrate. The Emperor would indeed be most displeased, and very likely most unkind to them. For another fleeting instant, he considered that their best fate might be to run the _Xephyr_ headlong into a supernova. Cos had been unkind before, Adrian remembered. He remembered the overwhelming pain and his wife's agonized cries as Palpatine rained Sith lightning down upon them--for far lesser infractions of his goals. Worse, they would be returning empty-handed, having not collected the Ghormani taxes. The thought of what the Emperor might do to them this time--of what he might do to Typhani--or, still worse, force _him_ to do to her--caused his stomach to turn in on itself. He had to at least find a way to keep her out of danger.

As usual, when they fought, he would be the first to relent. He stepped up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. She jerked away. "Don't touch me!" she spat, still angry. Her words seared his ears, and caused his already pounding head to throb even harder. He turned and sauntered into the cockpit, and for another hour sat staring blankly out the forward viewport. 

Typhani retreated into the sleeping alcove, sealing herself in, and collapsed onto the bed with an exasperated sigh. She lay on her back, staring out the overhead viewport as the galaxy that had once held so much hope and promise for them streaked by. Then she too remembered what happened the last time they had inadvertently crossed Palpatine's will and incurred his wrath. She also realized that Adrian would bear the greater responsibility, notwithstanding whether he himself landed his ship on an occupied platform or allowed an uncertified passenger to do it. She began to fear not only for her husband's career, but for their lives as well. She shuddered and choked back tears as the portent of a horrible fate welled up inside her--that she would lose Adrian to Palpatine's lightning device, or some other terrible torture, and that the Emperor would then take her as his concubine. 

She made her way tentatively to the cockpit entryway, leaning on the bulkhead as she stared at him for a moment. He glanced around quickly to acknowledge her presence. "What are we going to do?" she asked, her voice a bit tremulous.

He turned toward her. "I don't know," he said flatly, but reached out for her to come sit with him. For a long time, they just held each other.

"We have to figure something out," Typhani said urgently, the uncertainty causing her more stress than she cared to bear.

"I know," he acknowledged. "For a start, Typhani, I was flying the ship. That's the way it has to be."

She put her arms around him and rested her head on his shoulder. "I can't let you face this alone," she whispered. "Besides, why would you do such a thing in defiance of Cos' orders. It wasn't a Jedi gathering after all."

He returned her embrace, rhythmically stroking her long, black hair. "I've been thinking--about the book I'm writing. Perhaps I can try to couch this as an example of the power of the New Order, an example that mass insurrection will not be tolerated. The main outcome I'm afraid of is that word of this mishap may cause those who nurture undercurrents of dissent within the Senate to manifest themselves in outright defiance. That recalcitrant Chandrillan Mon Mothma and her noisome Alderaani consort Bail Organa are particularly ripe for that sort of thing."

Typhani sat up. "But if they engage in open defiance, wouldn't they make themselves targets? Better a fixed target than ambiguous unrest. And what if you struck those targets down?"

"It's all speculation, Typhani. You know what Cos did to us before . . . " He looked away at that.

"Come to bed, Adrian," she suggested. "We've nothing to gain by exhausting ourselves." He nodded in agreement, checked the autopilot, and followed her to the sleeping alcove. Typhani was so exhausted from their ordeal that she did manage to sleep, albeit lightly. Adrian could not, however, and lay staring out at the stars warping past overhead until he heard the persistent beeping of the comm station alert. It sent a rush of ice down his spine. Reluctantly, he rose to check it.

"What is it?" Typhani asked as she came up behind him. He stood staring blankly down at the comm station readout screen. He turned to face her, and she was taken aback by how pale he looked.

For a moment, the words would not come. "It's Vader," he finally croaked. "Cos has sent him after us. He's locked on to the signal from the tracking device on one of the remittance containers in the hold. He knows where we are. And . . . we're to go to sublight at Carida, where we are to meet him and he is to escort us back to Coruscant." The life seemed to drain out of his voice with every word, not from fear, but from failure.

Typhani stood frozen for a moment, then sank into a chair. Then she looked up suddenly at her husband. "What about the escape pods? We could jettison to some world, to someplace no one knows us."

Adrian looked over at the hatch to one of the _Xephyr's_ two escape pods for a moment, then sat down next to her, taking her hand. "We can't hide, Typhani. I told you that before. He'd have Fett and every other bounty-hunter in the galaxy looking for us. Besides, could you really live like that?"

"Yes," she muttered. 

"And give up everything you have, your birthright, your position in the Mining Guild?"

"Not quite everything," she said, looking down into her lap. She slowly raised her free hand to her pelvis. "I'm late," she continued. "I wanted to wait to tell you until I knew for sure." 

For a long, loving moment, he just stared at her, then embraced her fully. He tenderly took her face in his hands, and drew very close to her. "I love you so much, Typhani, and I certainly didn't mean those awful things I said to you earlier, about my efforts being wasted upon you."

She reached up to take his wrists. "Nor I," she said. "I have no regrets with you, and the thought of being without you, well . . . " 

He tucked his hand under her chin to make her look at him. "Typhani, you have to go in the lifepod. I can drop you at Corulag, and you can make your way to Morgana's. Then she can take you someplace safe. I can then proceed to Carida at sublight speed so Vader won't think anything of it."

"No!" she protested. "Not without you!"

"I am the one Cos will blame for this! If he has me, he won't care about you!"

"But--"

"Typhani, you may have something far more important to protect now! If by some miraculous chance I should survive this, I'll come for you at once. But if I don't survive, at least something of me might," he insisted as he cupped his hand over her womb. She just shook her head, and her face drew up as the tears came. They embraced each other tightly, not knowing what fate awaited on Coruscant. 

Typhani gathered some of her things into a small bag that she could manage easily as Adrian prepared a message for his sister. When they arrived at Corulag, Adrian had to pry his wife's arms from him and force her into the lifepod. "You have to go. It's for the best," he kept telling her. At last, they stared longingly at each other through the hatch. In the rare instance of struggling to control his emotions, he leaned into the pod. "I love you, Typhani. No matter what happens, always remember that."

She drew close for what could be a final kiss. "I love you," she cried, nearly choking on her tears. With that, he pulled back, before he lost his will to do it, and sealed the hatch between them. He then proceeded quickly to the cockpit, where he cut the engines to sublight speed at the jump point off Corulag. He took the _Xephyr_ into a high-orbit position, and, with knots in both his stomach and his throat, released the lifepod. 

"Goodbye, Typhani," he whispered tremulously. "Protect our legacy. Protect it well." He watched the lifepod for a moment, then put his head back and shut his eyes. No sooner had he done so than the incoming ship alert signal sounded. Adrian snapped alert, and, to his horror, the lifepod was no longer traveling toward the atmosphere of Corulag, but rather back out into space! He quickly scanned his control panel, only to see the signal of a large ship behind and above him. He brought up visual scan. The new Imperial Star Destroyer _Decimator_ had also just exited hyperspace and loomed just aft. Vader. "No!" he shrieked. "Leave her alone!" He brought the cruiser around hard just in time to see the pod enter the Destroyer's underbay, a powerful tractor beam gently pulling it aboard. Then he felt a slight jerk as the beam locked on to the _Xephyr_. 

Aboard the reeling lifepod, Typhani Tarkin steeled herself up for the horror she feared would come. Trembling violently, she choked back her tears and sat quiet and still, facing the hatch, as she heard and felt the exterior of the pod make contact with the docking bay floor. She waited for the crew to open it, taking only quick, shallow breaths. When the hatch opened, she faced Vader himself. Surely he would not hurt them, she thought, after all they'd done for him. "Lady Tarkin!" he exclaimed when he realized she was alone. "Where is your husband?" Vader stepped toward her as two stormtroopers helped her climb out of the pod. Then he noticed her tear-stained face.

She knew she had to answer him. "He's . . . he's still aboard the ship," she squeaked.

Vader then looked up an over the top of the lifepod. "What's wrong with it? Did you incur much damage?" 

"I--I don't . . ." she began. She looked over her shoulder to see what Vader was looking at, only to see the _Xephyr_ being hauled into the docking bay. The ramp lowered, and Wilhuff Tarkin strode down, prepared to accept his fate if Vader would help him get Typhani to safety.

The two military men faced each other. "What in the name of the Empire happened out there?" Vader asked, having heard the initial reports.

"I can understand that the Emperor is upset," Tarkin began.

"Yes!" Vader interceded. "When he heard about the ambush, he feared intensely for your safety. He was concerned that your ship had been damaged, and so he ordered me to cut to sublght here at Corulag so as to come in behind you and intercept you should you have a problem exiting hyperspace. When I saw you here, and the lifepod, I assumed the Emperor had been correct. Are you both all right?"

Adrian and Typhani shot quick glances at each other. "Yes," Adrian confirmed. "We're fine." Vader then cocked his head questioningly at the lifepod. "Oh, that. I was uncertain as to whether we might have drawn foreign matter into the sublight engines upon liftoff from Ghorman. It can cause a serious fire in this type of ship. I wasn't taking any chances with the Emperor's Hand; better to deliver her to the safety of my sister," he invented, casting an arm around his wife.

"Good! The Emperor eagerly awaits your arrival back at the Imperial Palace so he can hear about this victory first-hand."

"And we shall be glad to brief him!" Tarkin clipped confidently. 

Then, Typhani began to make a face. As the _Xephyr_ acclimated to the docking bay, Tarkin received confirmation that his ruse was believable, as the unmistakable odor of burnt flesh emanated foully from his ship. The crew would discover several body parts, seared, fused, then frozen to the hull, trophies for dissenters.

Vader's crew retrieved the Tarkins' needed belongings from the _Xephyr_ so that the ship could be properly scanned and sterilized, then escorted them to the _Decimator's_ currently unoccupied admiral's quarters, as Admiral Zaxx Takur had not yet officially assumed command of the vessel.

Once they were sealed inside, Adrian and Typhani embraced each other again, this time laughing openly, spinning each other around in circles. They couldn't believe their turn of luck! "You don't think it's a ruse," Typhani asked urgently, "that Darth is just teasing or placating us until he can deliver our heads to Cos?"

"No, I don't think so. He used an interesting word back there. I think Cos believes we were ambushed."

"Well, in a way, we were," she pointed out.

"Let's just hope it stays that way. What happened out there never leaves our lips, Typhani. I was flying the ship. You must always insist that was so." She nodded in understanding.

The next afternoon, they arrived back on Coruscant. The Emperor seemed overjoyed to see them. "Ah, my dear Typhani, are you quite all right? What an experience that must have been for you!" he greeted as the Royal Guards left them in private.

"Yes, Cos, I'm fine. I must say it was quite wonderful to have had the opportunity to see my husband in action," she replied with a wide smile.

Palpatine smiled back at her, then turned to Adrian. "Yes, I'm sure it was! I do wish I could have been there to see that! I tell you, this galaxy is riddled with sniveling idiots like the Ghormani! I extend dialog through diplomatic representation, and they respond by staging a mass protest to ambush one of my best commanders, with his wife aboard, no less? This is a prime example of why we need the New Order! Some of those slogans of theirs _incense_ me! How dare they oppose me! How _dare_ they slur my name so! 'No Payments for Palpatine's Patsy' indeed! I tell you, Tarkin, that was a brilliant move! Now I see what you mean in your latest manuscript about examples of force. And never mind the taxes. The Ghormani fools have chosen to pay their taxes in blood, and in doing so have sent a fine message to the rest of the galaxy that will serve our purposes well! You've done quite well in demonstrating the iron will of the New Order, and with a bit of audacity, I might add!" Palpatine then walked over to his desk.

"I've finished reading the first draft of your new book. A brilliant work, your most brilliant yet. And I see now that you are a man who puts action behind his words. Therefore, I think it's time to move forward, _Moff_ Tarkin. I hereby grant you that provincial governorship you've always wanted--of your homeworld of Eriadu and the Seswenna Sector! And, since you've done so well at Ghorman, I would also like you to _assist_ Moff Kaine in being equally convincing in his Atravis Sector!"

And so, for the next two decades, Wilhuff Tarkin wrought untold death and destruction upon billions of other beings who would oppose his Emperor, and found himself forever linked with the foul stench of the burnt flesh of Ghorman.

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